Geoffrey Kabaservice is a great historian of American politics, first a fine biography of Kingman Brewster's circle of postwar liberal Republicans and now an even more ambitious book, a history of the decline of moderate Republicanism as a political force since the 1950s. The book was recently reviewed at length and favorably on the cover of the New York Times Book Review.

Rule and Ruin is a book in which I take special pleasure, since some of the individual profiles in the book began as blogposts on the FrumForum site. It's an especially timely book now, when so many Republicans seem gripped by a 1964 style urge to hurl themselves over a cliff to make a point. Geoff's insights and analysis offer both warning and hope.

I talked earlier this week to Geoff in the offices of Newsweek/Daily Beast here in Washington. You can listen to the conversation here.